Wednesday, September 13, 2006

John Hodgman: F***ing Genius

If there was any doubt that John Hodgman is a fucking genius (and I don't throw around the "F.G." tag as freely as I do the superlatives), his ad campaign for the paperback version of "The Areas of My Expertise" would be it.

It's an homage to George Plimpton's old Intellivision ad.

(You know Intellivision right? What's the birth-year cut-off to know/love/remember Intellivision? Basic recap: It was a short-lived competitor to Atari, the gold standard, and Coleco, which had that kick-ass driving-wheel accessory. Meanwhile, I myself had a Vectrex, which sounds vaguely like a product you'd use to clear up an STD. Now who remembers Vectrex?! This was all pre-Nintendo, of course.)

John Hodgeman is simply brilliant. I had the opportunity to see him do a reading in person, crammed into a tiny room with about 35 people, where he passed around a bottle of whisky and took Q&A on walkie-talkies, despite being no further than 20 feet from every single person.

The best part though, is that he's already upped for at least 1 more book. You liked the Hobos? Just wait for the Molemen.

This is why I love the Daily Show. If not for that show, I'd have no idea who Hodgman is (other than the 'I'm a PC' guy). He's further definite proof that TDS is the new SNL--all the smartest, funniest guys are ending up/coming out of there.

Highly recommended is Hodgman reading the hobo names from his book with Jonathan Coulton on guitar. You can find it on Hodgman's blog I think.

Anyone who only knows Hodgman from the Mac ads needs to read more books. "The Areas of My Expertise" is fucking genius (and Dan, I think it does help your street cred), and anyone near NYC should check out his Little Gray Book lecture series.

BTW, Scoop Jackson just said in his chat that ESPN has let Whitlock go from its columnist listing. Simmons has more fans than the rest of the site combined, so he's fine, but what the heck is ESPN.com doing by letting all of its personality leave? Shanoff, Whitlock, Bayless...hardly anyone worth reading that can rile you up. As much as I like Bill Simmons, he's on his way over the shark.

Whitlock's gone too? WTF? Is there even a reason to visit page 2 anymore? I can't believe more people would rather read the freaking uni watch and Jim Caple bitching about steriods in football over people with actual opinions. Who is their next columnist? Paul Maguire?

Bayless is gone?! Thank f'ing God (hey, everybody's doing it). Yeah, his only purpose was to rile things up; most of his columns were about him rather than the actual subject.Whitlock is good, but not Wiley (RIP) good.

I used to have an Intellivision. I could spend literally hours playing game after game of Astrosmash. I loved it so much that when the collection of Intellivision games came out for the PlayStation, I bought it!

I "borrowed" the neighbor's Vectrex for about a year. It included a football game on which a hitch pass to the WR would score a TD every time. For some reason, I found it endlessly fun to do this over and over and over in an attempt to break 100 points in a game.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.